The Liberation of Afrikaans
August 10, 2010By
One of the people I was excited to meet during my short World Cup trip to South Africa, was filmmaker Dylan Valley (rapper Lee Ursus introduced us). I was hoping to talk more to Dylan about his work, but football took precedence. Anyway Dylan has a new film out, “Afrikaaps,” on the neglected roots of the Afrikaans language (to the mainstream at least). Though the majority of Afrikaans speakers are not white, for most observers the language is synonymous with colonialism, Apartheid and white racism. And you can’t blame them. Afrikaner Nationalists and its allied media, cultural organizations, publishing industry, universities, school systems, etc., downplayed and degraded the fact that Afrikaans is a creole language since it was odds with their political project of racial purity and white domination. Postapartheid, some Afrikaners still hold on this exclusive vision. Valley’s film, which breaks with this history (btw, he is not the first), documents the similarly named stage production, “Afrikaaps,” which played festivals and earlier this year had a run at a leading Cape Town theater (here‘s a link to a review of the stage production and some rehearsal video). The stage production revolved around the a group of Cape Town-based artists, amongst them Jitsvinger, Bliksemstraal, Blaq Pearl, Emile YX, and Kyle Shepherd.
The result–a feature-length documentary–will premiere at this year’s Encounters International Documentary Film Festival in Cape Town and Johannesburg later this month (see the link for the schedule).
* My plan is to eventually interview director Dylan Valley once I have seen the film. I’ll keep AIAC readers updated.
– Sean Jacobs
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A sneak peek at the AFRIKAAPS rehearsal studio,
"Wild op Skuld" is one of the tracks reclaiming Afrikaans
in the cutting edge upcoming theatre production at the KKNK from the 1st of April and at The Baxter from the 7th April.
Additional camera and cameo appearance by Aryan Kaganof
Setting Afrikaans free
from the likes of Eugene
The fact that Eugene Terre Blanche's funeral took place the same day Afrikaaps opened at the Baxter Theatre provided an unexpected context for this ground-breaking stage work.
The symbolic liberation of Afrikaans from demagogues and despots like Terre Blanche brought a delightfully transgressive edge to this multi-media explosion.
The individuals involved in this bold collective project - who call themselves Die Argitekbekke (loosely translated as the "mouth architects") - are all established artists in their own right and "genres".
For example, Kyle Shepherd is regarded as one of South Africa's foremost young jazz composers/pianists and a likely successor to Abdullah Ibrahim. Emile Jansen and Janine van Rooy have been fine-tuning their hip-hop, jazz and R&B talents for ages. B.Boy and "metaphysical" poet Charl van der Westhuizen, aka Bliksemstraal, is a well-known artist in this neck of the hood.
Moenier Adams has been steeped in the Klopse and Malay choirs of Cape Town since primary school; electric and double-bass player Shane Cooper is an accomplished composer and producer; the lanky Quintin Goliath - Jitsvinger - has been burning up the hip-hop circuit since 2000, while poet, sculptor, storyteller and activist Jethro Louw has been a major influence in the recent revival and celebration of Khoi culture.
The researcher for this project is filmmaker, novelist and poet Ian Kerkhof, alias Aryan Kaganof, and the director is Catherine Henegan, founder of The Glasshouse in Amsterdam.
The potential artistic pitfall of this piece of contemporary agitprop was that all of this brimming individual talent could have so easily overwhelmed and dispersed focus. But the good news is that co-operation and a single collective artistic vision has resulted in a cohesive narrative that sizzles with authenticity, originality, energy and intelligence.
The seamless mixture of video, music, dance, hip-hop, break dancing and poetry is an exhilarating one. Each of these talented artists brings a complementary but different flavour to the unfolding narrative, which is about the alternative history and reclamation of Afrikaans.
While David Kramer and the late Taliep Petersen traced the historic roots of the songs of the Cape in Ghoema in 2006, the emphasis was on the music and they avoided direct sociopolitical commentary.
But with Afrikaaps there is a distinct political voice, one that asserts that Afrikaans is, contrary to popular wisdom, not in its death throes, but a thriving language - albeit one that has not been recognised.
Far from being the tongue claimed by the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners - formed in 1875 to protect and promote suiwer (pure) Afrikaans - the language is a creole created by slaves who worked in Dutch kitchens in the Cape. It is a language first written in Arabic, and today is spoken by around 64% of the inhabitants of the Western Cape.
Far from being a dull history lesson, this is a slick and professional celebration that is visually and artistically provocative and exciting. Henegan and her cast are to be congratulated for breaking so much new ground.
>via: http://www.timeslive.co.za/entertainment/article407497.ece/Setting-Afrikaans-...e